Clinical study of testicular tumor: tumor tissue content of hCG in seminoma

Abstract

Positive cases of serum human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) have been increased in patients with pure seminoma due to the progress of methods of measuring serum hCG. But the positive ratio and the value of serum hCG in pure seminoma cases are lower than those of non-seminoma cases. The relationship between the pathological type of testicular tumor and the hCG levels in both serum and tumor tissue was investigated, and clinical usefulness of the serum hCG levels as a tumor marker of pure seminoma was discussed. The materials were 19 pure seminomas, 14 non-seminomas and 11 normal testes as controls. HCG and hCG-beta in tumor tissue extracts and in the serum of blood from the spermatic and peripheral veins were measured by radioimmunoassay (RIA). The tissue content of hCG and hCG-beta were 276.7 +/- 136.1 mIU/g.tissue and 16.5 +/- 3.20 ng/g.tissue, respectively, in pure seminoma; 224,376 +/- 91,619 mIU/g.tissue and 4,608 +/- 1,817 ng/g.tissue, respectively, in non-seminoma including choriocarcinoma component; 1,807 +/- 1,428 mIU/g.tissue, and 37.0 +/- 11.2 ng/g.tissue, respectively, in non-seminoma including seminoma component but not including choriocarcinoma component; 20.4 +/- 3.1 mIU/g.tissue and 1.27 +/- 0.38 ng/g.tissue, respectively, in normal testes, (each M +/- SE). The tissue content of hCG-beta in pure seminoma is significantly higher than that in normal testis (p less than 0.01) and significantly lower than that in non-seminoma including choriocarcinoma component.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)